


Rey on the Island

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Adversaries, Gen, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 19:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6391168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A companion piece to My Name is Rey, I Come From  Jakku.  </p>
<p>http://archiveofourown.org/works/6365620</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rey on the Island

I can feel him looking for me.

Luke asks me how I know.

I say that it feels like a big wing sweeps across the island. For a moment everything is in its shadow.

Or if it’s a rainy day it feels like the clouds are going to close on me like a fist. Suddenly the endless rainclouds feel heavy enough to pin me down. There is a thought behind them, a mind, and it wants to get me. It’s a grabbing mind, and it wants to grab hold of my mind.

I won’t let it.

Luke says not to worry. It won’t find me. Plenty of people have been looking for him for years. Both from the Dark side and the Light. We’re well hidden here.

One thing I like about Luke is that he doesn’t say I’m just imagining things. On the other hand, he can also tell when I’m working myself up about nothing. I like that he can use the Force to know the difference, and it’s so gentle and simple when he uses it.

He doesn’t say it’s not true. Instead he asks “Is it Ben? Or the ….. the other one?”

“Not Sn…Not the other one. It’s Kylo Ren. I would know that mind anywhere. He doesn’t call himself Ben any more, you know.”

“I know. I use the name he won’t be listening for.”

I should get used to thinking of him as Ben, then. I can’t do it. I’ll call him Ren for now. Ren is hunting me. It is Ben that I am going to hunt, when I’m ready. I’m not going to say “when Luke thinks I’m ready,” because Luke will never think I’m ready.

He knows I think this. It’s another good thing about Luke. It’s easy being around somebody that understands things I don’t say aloud. He doesn’t try and change what I think, either. It’s my path. He’ll help me, but he won’t choose for me.

Ben. Ren. I only met him a short time, but it feels like there’s more of him than would fit one name.

I find it hard to remember his face exactly. There is the face I imagined before I saw him. Old and heavy, like the warlords who traded with Unkar Plutt on Jakku sometimes. They were violent men who could order a death with the same cold look as they ordered a meal. Their faces had a greasy look. I imagined a face like that, swollen with greed and anger and pride.

I was only right about the pride. When Ren took his mask off, I saw as much pride as I’ve ever seen in a face. I could tell he wanted me to be impressed. Maybe he was reading my mind even then. He couldn’t stand me thinking he was old and ugly. So he took his mask off. It was like he was saying “Look at me! I’m beautiful! I’m powerful! I’m special! You’ve never seen anyone like me!” And I hadn’t. He looked like a prince in a fairytale. I was impressed, for a moment.

But it was so strange. That he cared what I thought of him, while I was just terrified of him. As we looked at each other I realised something even stranger: under all that pride was the very opposite thing. Need. He needed me to admire him. So there was another face. It wasn’t very confident.

I saw that face again when we were fighting in the snow. He asked me to take him as a teacher. Pleading. When Luke started training me to fight, he said there was no way I had enough lightsaber technique to beat the Ben he knew. And it’s true, he had me on the run until I used the Force to help me. It was terrifying at the time, but I see now that he didn’t attack me the way he did Finn. He wasn’t trying to kill me. He needed something from me.

Well I don’t give a damn about him and what he thinks he can get from me.

I hated him before I met him. Finn told me how Ren tortured his friend Poe, how he ordered the stormtroopers to massacre the Tuanul villagers, and how he’d cut an old man in half just to teach him a lesson about “the power of the Force”. Like it was a joke, or something he could show off about. When Ren and Finn fought, Ren attacked him with spite and rage. Eyes slitted and teeth bared like he could have bitten Finn to death. It was the ugliest face I’d ever seen at that moment. A nasty, snarling rodent.

He looked like somebody else when he killed his father, and he had a face I couldn’t read at all. Sad and vicious, all at the same time. A mean, frightened child. Is that possible? That’s what I saw. Something happened there that I don’t understand.

He reminds me of the twisters I used to see in the desert, when the sand swirled up in tall columns. They would shift and change shape as you looked at them. Unstable. The wind pulled them apart.

There were people on Jakku like that. Usually they were addicted to glitterstim or alcohol. With them, you never knew who you were talking to. Sometimes they were reasonable. Generous, or funny. Or they could tell you interesting things. The next day they’d be a gibbering moron or a furious drunken idiot or a pathetic snivelling lump that would cry all over you and then try to stab you for your portions. Maybe Ren has some kind of problem like that.

I don’t know and I don’t care.

Maybe he thinks he can beat me using some new Force trick. But I’ve got to remember how on Jakku there were people stronger than me and people who pulled out weapons in a fight I’d never seen before. There were people with mean tricks and schemes I didn’t expect. If I didn’t beat them right away, I always beat them in the end. Ren can plan his nasty surprises but he’ll finish up looking the fool, in the end. Like the others.

Luke is worried that I can feel Ren looking for me. Years ago Luke somehow used the Force to get Ach-to itself to hide him. That’s an art he’ll teach me, but it’s really difficult to feel a planet’s Force, or do anything with it even if you can. It has to be a really empty planet, which makes Ach-to perfect for us if we want to stay hidden.

Luke used to be brave. He rushed off to help his friends before Yoda thought he was ready. It turned out all right in the end. I don’t know what happened to him.

Or I do know what happened. Ben happened. Luke never wants to care about another human being again.

Yet he’s always known I might come here. He’d left clues. He’d laid plans with R2D2. He probably hoped they’d fail. It must have been torture, waiting and knowing I might come anyway to shake him out of his peace.

He must have been afraid I’d be like him, or another Ben, or another Anakin. That I’d want him to be daring and dramatic. And it’s true, I wish he wasn’t so cautious. It drives me crazy. He’s so indecisive I want to scream sometimes.

But at least I can see what he has that nobody else ever talked about. Maybe he used to be so spectacular in the Force that everyone missed it. I think now his greatest gift is kindness.

So much kindness. He’s like Finn, that way.

He doesn’t even realise what it is. Instead he tells me all these stories about the good actions of right-thinking Force users. Moral tales of the Jedi. None of them mention kindness.

He’s teaching me one thing, but I’m learning something else.

**Author's Note:**

> This might become a companion piece to my predominantly Kylo Ren story, When I Am Fit to Speak


End file.
